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Filled with bright comic moments (Deeds playing the tuba to clear his mind, feeding donuts to horses), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town is a hymn to antimaterialism and the simple country life in the best manner of Henry David Thoreau. RBP

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1930s

CAMILLE (1936)

Producer: David Lewis, Bernard H. Hyman

Screenplay: Zoe Akins, from the novel and play La Dame aux camélias by Alexandre Dumas, fils

Photography: William H. Daniels, Karl Freund

Music: Herbert Stothart, Edward Ward

Cast: Greta Garbo, Robert Taylor, Lionel Barrymore, Elizabeth Allan, Jessie Ralph, Henry Daniell, Lenore Ulric, Laura Hope Crews, Rex OMalley

Oscar nomination: Greta Garbo (actress)

George Cukors Camille is one of the triumphs of early sound cinema, a showcase of superb acting from principals Greta Garbo and Robert Taylor, with able support from studio stalwarts Lionel Barrymore and Henry Daniell. Cukor evokes just enough of mid-nineteenth-century Paris to render affecting the melodramatic stylization of what is perhaps the most famous popular play ever written, adapted for the stage by Alexandre Dumas, fils, from his sensational novel. With its witty and suggestive dialogue, the script makes the novelists characters come alive for an American audience of another era.

Marguerite Gautier (Garbo), called Camille because of her love for the camellia, is a courtesan who falls in love with her companion, Armand Duval (Taylor), scion of an influential family. Their relationship, which can never be legitimized because of her dubious background, must come to an end and does so in two famous scenes that actresses have always relished. First, Armands father persuades Camille that she must give him up so that he can pursue a diplomatic career. Heartbroken, she dismisses Armand with the lie that he no longer interests her. Armand returns later to find her on her deathbed, where she expires while he weeps uncontrollably. The Breen Office, charged with the task of enforcing the industrys then-reactionary Production Code, must also have been moved by this story of prohibited and tragic love, requiring only a scene in which the romantic pair, technically illicit, vow their undying love to one another. RBP

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1930s

SABOTAGE (1936)

G.B. (Gaumont British) 76m BW

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Producer: Michael Balcon, Ivor Montagu

Screenplay: Charles Bennett, Ian Hay, Helen Simpson, E.V.H. Emmett, from the novel The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad

Photography: Bernard Knowles

Music: Louis Levy

Cast: Sylvia Sidney, Oskar Homolka, John Loder, Desmond Tester, Joyce Barbour, Matthew Boulton, S.J. Warmington, William Dewhurst

Alfred Hitchcock had just made a film entitled Secret Agent, based on stories by W. Somerset Maugham, and so his next project, based on Joseph Conrads novel The Secret Agent, had to be retitled Sabotage. Oscar Homulka is Mr. Verloc, a sinister agent for a shadowy foreign power who carries out acts of sabotage. In a departure from the original novel, Verloc and his wife (Sylvia Sydney) manage a small cinema, which allows Hitchcock to have fun connecting events in the narrative to the films playing on the screen.

Sabotage has two memorable set pieces. In the first, Stevie (Desmond Tester), the young brother of Mrs. Verloc, is sent by her husband to deliver a can of film. Unknown to Stevie, it contains a bomb timed to go off at 1:45 P.M. As we track Stevie across London he is delayed by a series of holdups, and eventually the bomb explodes while he is sitting on a bus. Hitchcock later regretted this, judging that it violated the directors contract with the audience, not to harm someone they had been encouraged to sympathize withthough he wound up doing exactly the same in Psycho (1960). In any case, the death of Stevie sets up the second bravura scene, the revengeful murder of Verloc by his wife. EB

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1930s

DODSWORTH (1936)

Screenplay: Sidney Howard, from novel by Sinclair Lewis

Photography: Rudolph Maté

Cast: Walter Huston, Ruth Chatterton, Paul Lukas, Mary Astor, David Niven, Gregory Gaye, Maria Ouspenskaya, Odette Myrtil, Spring Byington, Harlan Briggs, Kathryn Marlowe, John Payne

Oscar: Richard Day (art direction)

Oscar nominations: Samuel Goldwyn, Merritt Hulburd (best picture), William Wyler (director), Sidney Howard (screenplay), Walter Huston (actor), Maria Ouspenskaya (actress in support role), Oscar Lagerstrom (sound)

William Wylers compelling adaptation of Sinclair Lewiss novel about the dissolution of a wealthy American couples marriage represents the height of intelligent Hollywood filmmaking. Walter Huston plays the title character, an automobile mogul, who, after selling his business, must face the challenges of an opulent retirement and decides to take a grand tour of Europe with his wife, Fran (Ruth Chatterton). They leave the United States to discover continental culture and refinement. In Europe, the couple discovers that each wants something different from life, though in their own ways both want to stave off old age. Fran becomes involved in flirtations with playboys who roam the periphery of the rich and fashionable set. She becomes increasingly impatient with Dodsworths stubbornly American, provincial ways. Dodsworth cannot reconcile with Fran and desperately fears becoming useless. On the journey they meet Edith Cortright (Mary Astor), an American expatriate who has found a new way to live and remain vibrant, and who can offer Dodsworth a solution.